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0 pointsStranger438y ago0 comments

Please don't use the mere existence of the "Mickey Mouse" parliament as an evidence of direct representation to the EU as the parliament have literally none of the roles or authority of a real parliament but is mostly ceremonial, like the president of the EU.

The real power is and have always been with the council of ministers who is appointed by the member governments, and in practice only responsible to the member parliaments and not the EU parliament, who barely have authority to overrule the larger and more permanent commission, let alone propose any legislation.

Don't get me wrong I am pro EU but the current structure is pretty strange and mostly dysfunctional in trying to spread the pain evenly and prone to being dominated by large corporate interest groups.

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matt40778y ago· 2 in thread

Not a single piece of EU legislation (both directive and regulation) can be enacted without a majority in the EU parliament.

The only difference to national governments is the lack of a right to initiate legislation. But in practice, they just stick anything they want into any vaguely related piece of regulation. They do have the power to amend.

Stranger43OP8y ago

Even if what you stated was true(which is isn't for all cases) it's still a complete reversal of how every single other democratic parliament works as the EU parliament cannot propose anything.

It's correct that the commission(which it itself fairly powerless) have to ask the MEP for yes and no on directives, that is not the case on all regulations passed by the council of ministers as the council can choose to bypass the EU parliament, in cases where no disagreement exist within the council.

vsl8y ago

There are significant differences:

- no power to propose laws

- process heavily skewed in such way that it's extremely rare to throw Comission proposals entirely

- current procedure for reaching comprosive between EP and Comission is: small working group hashes out compromise text with no public oversight, is then rubber-stamped by plenary

- crucially, low citizen visibility into EP's working, no oversight

The last point is, I believe, crucial. EP is a dumping ground for politicians who failed nationally and gets virtually no press attention. What happens in national parliaments is news, covered in detail, even though the importance of EP, as the place where things can be influenced, is much bigger.

It is very much disfunctional as a democracy.

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